Many portable electronic devices are now equipped with a so-called touchscreen. In addition to displaying a graphic user interface, content and other information, the touchscreen also enables information to be input and the electronic device to be controlled by means of touch. Normally, the user of the electronic device can create an input by touching any point on the touchscreen on which information can be displayed.
For this purpose, the touchscreen contains a touch-sensitive touch pad, which is transparent so that the underlying display unit of the touchscreen remains visible to the user. The touch pad detects a touch on the touchscreen and generates a touch signal which generally reflects the position of the touch on the touchscreen. Known touchscreen technologies are based on resistive systems, capacitive systems, inductive systems or optical systems. Many touchscreens are also capable of detecting more than one touch at the same time and generating touch signals for a plurality of simultaneous touches (“Multi-Touch” or “In-Cell-Touch”).
The development of electronic devices which are equipped with touchscreens is responding more and more to the aesthetic wishes of the user. In this regard, electronic devices with a very narrow housing edge are seen as particularly pleasing. Moreover, they provide a large display and operating area. However, this leaves a very narrow housing edge which often results in a user unintentionally touching the touchscreen simply through holding or gripping the electronic device and creating an input.
To avoid creating unintentional inputs with a touchscreen, it is known to selectively reduce the touch-sensitive area of a touchscreen which is available for the display. The Intel prototype HASWELL “North Cape” can be mentioned in this regard. This relates to a portable laptop computer with a keyboard on which a touchscreen is releasably mounted. When the touchscreen is released from the keyboard, the area available for the display is reduced automatically in a peripheral edge region. With this, the peripheral edge region is at the same time switched to non-touch-sensitive mode.